The Slowdown: Poetry & Reflection Daily

Today’s poem is Hotter Than July by DaMaris B. Hill. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “I love my aging body because it is a living record of my growth. It holds all the history of my feelings and perceptions. When I hear music and begin to unselfconsciously dance, that’s my body calibrating once again, tuning. Do I wish to return my body to its former state?...

Today’s poem is Head of Anahit / British Museum by Peter Balakian. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem imagines a father’s future funeral and voices an intention to both preserve and remember the small moments, that which becomes large once our parents are no longer present in our lives.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown to...

Today’s poem is Salmon by Gabrielle Bates. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem imagines a father’s future funeral and voices an intention to both preserve and remember the small moments, that which becomes large once our parents are no longer present in our lives.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation make...

Today’s poem is Cricket Song by George Kalogeris. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “At times, no words exist to capture our rapid, forward-marching world. Life outpaces language. It is then we attempt to create fresh language or rinse cycle words until we have a new purchase on old concepts. For example, for about a decade, I’ve been trying to formulate a wo...

Today’s poem is I Have No Idea What's Going to Happen by Justin Marks. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s understated poem shows us how impromptu encounters with art, those that are unforeseen, disruptive in the best sense, have us dwell outside time and exist within the spirit of the maker, then return us to our days with a new purchase on our lives....

Today’s poem is Jesus Saves by Jae Nichelle. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s sly poem riffs off that famous setup of three holy men walking into a bar. Instead of a priest, a rabbi, and a minister, Jesus walks in, and instead of a bar, he saunters into a coffee shop. I enjoy when poets ask themselves the question “What if,” which is the crux of any...

Today’s poem is Egrets (in memory of Barry Lopez) by Ralph Black. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Writers build universes out of letters and words from mere marks of a pen or keystrokes on a keyboard: an interiority to be heard and imagined in the reader’s mind. Which is to say: poets rely on readers to make pictures in their head or to hear the thoughts o...

Today’s poem is Everything Lies in All Directions by Hua Xi.

Today’s poem is Context is all by Erica Hunt. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem underscores the implied racial and class dynamics at the center of American life. How we are defined and claimed and rendered opponents; how the ongoing battles and struggles construct an “Us vs Them.” Even when it means abandoning an authentic selfhood separate from...

Today’s poem is The Freeways Considered As Earth Gods by Dana Gioia. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s terrifically imagined poem personifies our system of roads and thoroughfares as commanding mythic figures. In this way, it dramatizes the extent to which we are profoundly enmeshed with and dependent on that system, which has made life convenient fo...

Today’s poem is My Mother Talks to Her Son About Her Heart by Kerrin McCadden. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “I marvel at our capacity to love each other, beyond artificial categories and social boundaries. I am awed by how we fill in the gaps for each other.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a differenc...

Today’s poem is on persona by Raena Shirali. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “I often think about poetry’s distinct ability to mute what estranges and highlight more of what we share. In writing poems about our lives, we provide pathways for others to feel and understand our common journey of breathing together on our shared planet, and in the best case, to...

Today’s poem is Forgiveness, Perhaps by Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem, through repetition, reminds us that forgiveness takes serious effort; it is an ongoing act of affording grace, mercy, and compassion, whose result allows us to live more fully in the present, rather than be destroyed by the past.” Celebrate...

Today’s poem is September by Nathaniel Perry. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s gorgeous poem invokes the enigmatic energy of an impending storm, the kind that mesmerizes, that beckons us to read the symbolism of nature, that points to both destruction and life.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a d...

Today’s poem is Possum by Todd F. Davis.

Today’s poem is There Is No Touchdown Here, Belichick by Vi Khi Nao.

Today’s poem is A Statement from No One, Incorporated by Justin Phillip Reed.

Today’s poem is Birds in Home Depot—December by Richard Maxson.

Today’s poem is Short Essay on Love by Sarah Manguso.

Today’s poem is Polycardial by James Hoch.

Today’s poem is Discourse by Orlando White.

Today’s poem is Foxglove by Ambalila Hemsell.

Today’s poem is In Light of Stars by Bruce Willard.

Today’s poem is Heirloom by Zeina Hashem Beck.

Today’s poem is Landscape with Things by Alexandria Hall.